Nokia 800 gets camera-tastic Lumia branding

We know there are plenty of Nokians out there fretting about what will become of the company's reputation for making some actually quite good cameras once the Windows Phone era kicks off.

Well it's not much, but a new naming reference suggests that – finally – a worthy replacement for the Nokia N8 and its superb camera is in the pipelines.

The N8 has a 12-megapixel snapper, which is still ahead of most of what's out there despite the Nokia high-ender being a year old now. But it's more the rest of the N8's camera's features that set it apart from its rivals – the likes of the large sensor, Carl Zeiss optics and a huge array of added features, functions and settings.

But as the new iPhone 4S shows, the competition is catching up fast, and Nokia hasn't been showing much sign of doing anything about it – apart from dishing up a few updates to the N8 to make it even better.

But finally we've seen some interesting news that could point to a new Nokia that finally matches up to the N8's camera legacy.

Gaming dev blog Occasional Gamer has spotted a reference to the Nokia Lumia 800 in its usage stats, leading to the usual flurry of “is this the Sea Ray” comments.

We'll leave that aside for now, but considering the Nokia N8 is actually the N8-00, it's not unreasonable to expect that a device called the N800 would be its spiritual successor. And if so, thinking that Lumia is a reference to the camera is surely not a great leap (even if it is partly inspired by the fact that Panasonic's compact camera range is called Lumix).

Anyhow, we're expecting to see what the Sea Ray is – and isn't – at Nokia World in less than three weeks' time.